On the Thursday 15 April 2021 episode of the Greek late night talk show The 2nite Show, the well-known in Greece actor and film director Renos Haralambidis talked about how his miraculous birth took place through the intervention of Saint Irene Chrysovalantou. His real first and middle name is Irenaios Chrysovalantis, which testifies to the miracle.
While his parents were Greek villagers who went to find work in Germany, they tried through various means to have a child, going to the best hospitals, and this effort lasted fourteen years. It came to the point where his mother said to his father to leave her so he can marry someone else who would be able to give him a child. He did not leave her. The truth is that she had an issue that prevented her from having a child and it was irreversible.
Actor and musician Chester Hanks, better known as Chet and the son of Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, described his conversion from atheism after being touched by the hand of God.
Hanks, who has starred in recurring roles on TV shows such as “Empire,” made an appearance on the “IMPAULSIVE Clips” podcast, where he opened up about a time in his teens that his famous parents sent him away to a wilderness camp because of his bad behavior.
On
December 18, 1997, one of the most famous and beloved comedians Chris
Farley was found dead inside his rented 60th-floor high-rise apartment
on Chicago’s Miracle Mile. He was only 33 years old, like his hero John Belushi.
In the days
before his death, it is said that he would have put Nero to shame, binge eating, binge drinking, binge everything. He was seen drinking at a bar called the Crobar and at
a bar called Karma, at the Cheesecake Factory, at the Berghoff Cafe and
at the Hunt Club with his brother John, where he did a Wolfman Jack
impression and let strippers drape themselves over his body.
A few years ago I visited Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, not only to capture the spectacular views, but as a film buff, to also see where dozens of scenes from Hollywood movies were filmed, including one of my all time favorites, Rebel Without a Cause, in which Griffith Observatory played a pivotal role. I had known there was a bust of James Dean set up in his honor there, so I made it a priority to visit the bust and try to get a photo with it. It was then that I noticed something that surprised me, and confused me a bit, that prompted me to do a little research in an attempt to figure out why I was looking at an ancient Greek inscription on his right shoulder. Since today is the 65th anniversary of the premature and tragic death of James Dean on September 30, 1955, I thought I would post the story behind this ancient Greek inscription.
Upon the completion of filming for his role in the upcoming film "Man of God", which is about the life of Saint Nektarios, in which he plays the role of a paralyzed man healed by Saint Nektarios, Mickey Rourke together with the film's director Yelena Popovic paid a special visit to a popular shrine dedicated to Saint Nektarios.
While still in Greece the actor wanted to visit the Church of Saint Nektarios in Kamariza of Attica, where the late Elder Nektarios Vitalis (+ 2018), who was miraculously visited and healed by Saint Nektarios, had been the parish priest.
During his visit the actor was visibly moved and prayed as he entered the church with tears in his eyes. He stood alone by himself for a some time, holding in his hand a prayer rope.
Hollywood actor Mickey Rourke recently sat down for an interview with the Orthodoxia News Agency to discuss his role in the film, Man of God, on the life of the great 20th-century wonderworker St. Nektarios of Aegina, which is currently begin filmed in Greece, and miracles he has experienced in his own life. Filming for the film Man of God is scheduled to wrap up on September 21, with a
hopeful release in early December 2020.
Famous French actor Gerard Depardieu, who has had multiple religious conversions in his life, has now been baptized an Orthodox Christian.
The 71-year-old star was baptized in a ceremony last Friday, 4 September, at the Saint Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris. There were 30 people present at the ceremony. Media reports also state that he became godparent of a girl baptized on the same day as himself.
“Under the solemn chants of the choir and the prayers of the officiants, Gerard Depardieu had his body and head sprayed abundantly with water, failing however to be fully submerged, as is the custom,” Valeurs Actuelles reported. From photos taken during the ceremony, it looks like the actor had to sit for most of the service.
I thought I would explore an aspect of the life of Natalie Wood little talked about together - her ethnicity and religion. Too often when the name Natalie Wood is mentioned, immediate focus is on her tragic death. For fans like me, however, my thoughts immediately go to her fascinating life and brilliant work. The focus on her death has unfortunately blurred deeper explorations of her life, making it difficult to uncover and decipher the truth about the stories of her personal life, especially something so personal as her religion. As I write this, I can't say I have all the answers. In fact, I think at this time I am only able to scratch the surface. Don't expect too many details below, so consider this a beginning to an exploration I plan to continue and expand upon as my knowledge of her increases.
In 1983 the famous Greek actress and singer Irene Pappas delivered a poignant rendition of "Ti Ypermacho Stratigo" from within Hagia Sophia, though it was illegal to offer prayers out loud at the time. Afterwards, when asked about the experience, she said the following to a reporter: "The temple is desolate, naked, and you feel like it has lost all of its decorations. It's as if all this history from over the centuries has been washed away, the emperors and the empresses, a thousand one hundred years of history. You're saddened, you're very saddened, and yet I said Ti Ypermacho Stratigo. It's as if someone is victorious yet not victorious with the situation. They are victorious with their soul, just like the Greek people."
Aliki Vougiouklaki was one of the most popular actresses in Greece, and was given the title of the National Star of Greece. She died on 23 July 1996 at the age of 62, just three months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer while touring in Thessaloniki for a performance of "The Sound of Music". Her funeral was held in the Athens Cathedral on 25 July 1996 and she was buried in the First Cemetery of Athens.
A month before her death, in June of 1996, Vougiouklaki visited the Monastery of Saint Ephraim in Nea Makri. Archimandrite Philotheos Theodoropoulos, who was present during this visit, revealed the emotional conversation that Aliki Vougiouklaki had with the abbess Makaria at the monastery she founded and to whom Saint Ephraim wondrously revealed his martyrdom and the location of his relics:
In the video interview below, five-time Emmy award winning Hollywood actor Jonathan Jackson, who frequently visits Mount Athos as a pilgrim, talks about perhaps the most challenging role of his career playing Elder Joseph the Hesychast in a documentary filmed on Mount Athos.
Jonathan Jackson sees this particular role as an "incredible blessing", in his interview with the International Orthodox Church News Agency and journalist Pepi Oikonomakis. He calls it a "unique experience" both "physical and spiritual", and he would not have done it without the blessing and prayers of the Athonite fathers.
I wrote this on August 5th to commemorate the death of Marilyn Monroe, but had issues publishing anything to this site that needed to be resolved. So here it is, albeit late.
On my last night in Los Angeles in March of 2018, I decided to take a self-guided tour to about a dozen locations associated with the dark side of Hollywood, basically where famous murders or deaths took place. One of the locations I visited was where Marilyn Monroe died of a drug overdose on August 5, 1962 at the age of 35. It was her house at the time, in Brentwood.
I visited the location because I always had a great admiration for Marilyn Monroe, and have read a lot about her, and seen pretty much all her films. One thing most people don't know about her is how she was admired as somewhat of an intellectual and voracious reader by her peers, despite the media pushing her image as a dumb blonde and sex goddess, to her dismay, and to which she responded: "Maybe I’m a sexless sex goddess."
Popular Hollywood star Jonathan Jackson visited Holy Mount Athos together with his 8-year-old-son on Tuesday 28 August 2018, to offer one of his Emmy Awards.
During his five day visit to Mount Athos, Jackson spent most of his time at the Vatopaidi Monastery to celebrate the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, but also visited the Xenophontos and Simonopetra Monasteries.
Porphyrios was adorned by the sword,
Brightly adorned with the purple of blood.
Saint Porphyrios lived during the reign of Emperor Aurelian (270-275), and was from the city of Ephesus. From a young age he was raised in the theater with the mimes, namely those who acted out every form and movement of people.
Once he followed the count of Alexandria to Caesarea, and there he acted out the Holy Baptism of the Christians, where he was baptized by another mime who falsely pretended to be a Bishop. In this way they mocked the mysteries of the Christians.
Petros Xekoukis gave an interview for the magazine Loipon with Renee Sarantinou, and revealed among other things how he acquired the cap of Saint Paisios.
You have in your home the cap worn by Saint Paisios?
Of course, I have the cap of Saint Paisios. I saw him for the first time in 1979, where I met him at Panagouda, at his cell, at the Skete of Saint Panteleimon, at the Holy Mountain.
St. Porphyrios the Mime (Feast Day - September 15)
Verses
Persuaded to mock Baptism, you mock error,
Being cleansed Porphyrios, and beheaded by the sword.
Saint Porphyrios was an actor in the days of Emperor Julian the Apostate (361-363). In the course of his birthday celebration, the Emperor persuaded Porphyrios to mimic and make fun of the Christian Mysteries, specifically Holy Baptism.
Hence, Porphyrios entered into a font with water, and cried out: "The servant of God Porphyrios is baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." And having immersed himself into the water, he got out and put on the white robe of the newly-illumined, crying out: "Now I am a Christian."
Greek actor Theocharis Ioannides, who was in Los Angeles on Orthodox Easter (Pascha) Sunday, uploaded to his Instagram account a video of Tom Hanks on stage during a Greek Orthodox Easter celebration that afternoon, where he greets the audience by saying in Greek "Christos Anesti!" (Christ is Risen) and "Alithos Anesti!" (Truly He is Risen) to blues music.
The late, great, actor Gregory Peck was half Irish. He grew up with tales from his grandmother of their "Black Irish" ancestry. A mostly antiquated term, "Black Irish" was used predominately in the U.S. and Canada referring to people of Irish descent who have black hair. The Black Irish were long regarded in folklore as having descended from sailors of the Spanish Armada shipwrecked or otherwise seeking refuge on the Irish coast, and indeed looked rather different from their blond or red-headed Celtic countrymen. Yet Spyros Skouros, the former president of 20th Century Fox studios, had a different theory.
On the twenty-seventh of this month [February], we commemorate the Holy Martyr Gelasios who was formerly a mime, who was ordered to parody Holy Baptism, and was truly baptized and perfected by the sword.
Verses
Intending to incite laughter through Illumination you laughed at error, Having been washed Gelasios is beheaded.
Gelasios, of the village Mariamne near Damascus, was an actor. In a performance at Heliopolis of Syria, he played the part of a catechumen in a dramatized parody of the Christian's Mystery of Holy Baptism. As he was immersed in the waters, the audience laughed. Divine Grace, however, wrought a miracle, and Gelasios emerged from those waters transformed. As the play continued and he was garbed in the white gown of the newly-illumined, he declared before the crowd, "I am a Christian. When I was under those waters, I was awestruck by the glory that I beheld. I am now ready to be slain on behalf of Christ!" The rest of the cast, knowing that these lines were not in the script, were aghast. The audience soon understood that Gelasios was not jesting but instead meant every word of his public confession. Roused to fury, the audience came down upon Gelasios, who was still clad in white, and dragged him out of the theatre and stoned him. Christians who witnessed the stoning, afterward took up his honorable relics and returned with them to their own country. A church was built over the Martyrs tomb.
The soul of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, best known for the part of evil sorcerer Shang Tsung in the Mortal Kombat movies, has been captured by Russia – he has apparently decided to be baptized into the Orthodox Church.
Tagawa, an American actor of Japanese descent, who took part in a new Russian film called The Priest-San, decided to abandon his faith and become a true follower of Jesus Christ’s Orthodox teachings, Interfax reports.
The news was spread via Facebook by one of his colleagues, Ivan Okhlobystin, an actor and prominent Russian religious figure. He shared a photo of Tagawa taken with a giant cross, probably snapped during filming not far from Moscow.
“I’m happy to say that… after deep and thorough consideration Cary Tagawa, who played the part of the Japanese Orthodox priest in our new film The Priest-San, will take the Sacrament of Holy Baptism,” his post goes.
“I can identify with the spirituality of Ivan (Okhlobystin) and Pyotr (Mamonov), I am deeply religious myself. You cannot just grasp the essence of the Russian Orthodox Church with its centuries of history. Getting to know it takes time, and it's a job for the heart rather than the mind. When I had first come to Russia I had very little time to get into the character. So I visited a number of Russian cathedrals in Yaroslavl and Rostov. Simply being inside had a very powerful effect on me,” Tagawa said in an interview to Kinopoisk.ru in 2013 when the shooting in Russia was done.
Tagawa also expressed his intention to become a Russian citizen at a press conference, according to Orthodox news website pravmir.ru.
“I’m not following the new trend,” he said, most likely alluding to American boxer Roy Jones Jr and French actor Gerard Depardieu. “I follow my heart. There are no easy decisions either in America, or anywhere else in the world. This will be a new challenge for me.”
The film, soon to hit screens in Russia, tells the story of a Japanese priest, who leaves Japan due to Yakuza wars and heads for a small Russian town to help its locals fight rampant corruption. The movie is the latest project from the "Orthodox" producing studio.
(He was baptized by Metropolitan Hilarion in the Cathedral of the Joy of All Who Sorrow. His baptismal name is Panteleimon.)
